Sustainable Solano is connecting a neighborhood through gardening

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One thing the owners of this Vallejo home wanted as part of their permaculture garden is an area for herbs, which is what’s going in here, along with a swale to help irrigate with rain water.
(Rachel Raskin-Zrihen — Times-Herald)

A Vallejo neighborhood was a hub of activity Saturday as participants worked to create Sustainable Solano’s first Resilient Neighborhood on a stretch of Louisiana Street.

The group, which began as a Benicia community garden, has grown to create sustainable gardens in front and back yards around the County, and this is its first time expanding to include four neighboring houses.

Program Manager Kassie Munro of Napa said this project is the group”s largest in scale and scope, but members hope the concept catches on and such sustainable, edibles and shade-producing gardens start springing up all over Solano County.

“We want to see neighborhoods that take better care of their environment and each other,” she said. “We’re focusing on creating life-supporting eco-system services – producing food, creating shade and cycling water. We capture roof water and use it by channeling it through swales, to where we want it to go.”

Neighbors and other volunteers work with Sustainable Solano to install a permaculture garden in the backyard of one house on a block where a total of four homes will have edibles and shade trees growing in their front and/or back yards to enjoy and share, as part of a pilot project.(Rachel Raskin-Zrihen — Times-Herald)

Program spokeswoman Allison Angel, said the plan is to transform this central Vallejo street “into an environmentally and socially resilient community hub. Using landscaping elements of our Sustainable Backyard program as a foundation, this new program will build in additional resiliency elements focused on temperature regulation and strengthening community networks.”

The design will treat the homes as part of the same ecosystem, linking them together through shared services and planned diversity, like providing shade in communal areas and producing a varied supply of food, she said.

“Over time, we plan to work with this established team to bring additional neighbors and community organizations into the hub as part of a larger movement to transform our cities into more regenerative, equitable and resilient places to live,” Angel said.

Plants going in, in the back and/or front yards of the four homes selected include native edible perennials, pollinators and various types of fruit trees.

“It’s about stacking functions,” Munro said. “Like, an orange tree – it produces shade, provides food, captures carbon and helps cycle water. We’re trying to create a shift change, back to the way nature designed it.”

Thirty-three-year Benicia resident Marilyn Bordet is chair of Sustainable Solano. She said the backyard program worked so well, “We decided to expand it. We’re all about resilient neighborhoods.”

The group applied for and was awarded a $100,000 PG&E Foundation grant to help fund the effort, she said.

“It’s like environmental justice,” Bordet said. “Like the victory gardens in world War II. We’re trying to get back to some of the things Americans have always done. We’re trying to encourage small sale farming in Solano County.”

At least a dozen volunteers, including the neighbors whose yards are being transformed, and some whose yards aren’t yet, pitched in to held Saturday.

“I’m interested in doing this for my yard; for my neighborhood,” said Maria Munoz, who stopped by Saturday, but lives in another part of town. “I attended some of the workshops. I believe in their principals – in using native plants, pollinators and good use of water.”

Joanna Palmer said her house is among those selected for inclusion, and she couldn’t be more excited.

“We’ve been in California about a year and a half, partly to be in a climate that’s enjoyable to be outside in, where you can grow a garden,” she said. “So Carla, our neighbor, met someone from sustainable Solano at an event and was told about this program, and told us about it and the minute we saw that, we knew we wanted to be involved.”

Palmer said she and her family like the principles – more sustainability, efficient use of water, more edibles.

“We’re getting a loquat tree and a couple of pineapple guavas,” she said.

At least a couple of electeds stopped by to check on the project’s progress on Saturday, the women said.

Projects like Saturday’s are a combination of community work day and hands-on educational workshop,” Munro said. “It’s creating people who can then teach it to others. It’s low-tech, accessible. Anyone can do it.”

Work on the Resilient Neighborhood Pilot Project is expected to go on until June.

Dominic Sanchez said his wife got their family involved in the project.

“They’re going to do our front yard,” he said, as he manhandled a mountain of mulch in a wheelbarrow. “We’ll have a couple of trees… a Santa Rosa plum, and some kind of citrus. I love the idea that they’re putting up fruit that people can walk by and grab a piece.”

In her 20 years with the Times-Herald, Rachel Raskin-Zrihen has covered education, the City of American Canyon, business, downtown Vallejo, public safety and general assignment. She has and occasionally still does, write a column – humor or otherwise. She lives locally, and is the married mother of two grown sons.